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United Auto Workers will support Walmart strikers on Black Friday
We can now see why the imminent Walmart strikes on Black Friday have spooked the company. They have engaged in a two-prong PR strategy, dismissing the strikes as being carried out by a small faction of its 1.4 million associates, while also seeking National Labor Relations Board reliefto block the strikes as illegal union-based activity. The thinking here is that the strikes have gained in strength over the month of October, with wildcat walkouts ongoing at both stores and warehouses, and that they want to nip this in the bud. In the Internet age, actions like this hold the potential for going viral.
And that does appear to be the case. Several sympathizers, seeing a point of weakness for Walmart, have jumped aboard with help in promoting the Black Friday protests. The United Auto Workers, one of the more insular unions as far as activity outside their specific area of interest is concerned, just went out to their members supporting the strikers and encouraging attendance:
Workers at Walmart are planning mass actions around the country on Black Friday to stand up to their employer and live better, forcing the company to recognize their organization and collaborate with them on important issues from wages to scheduling to healthcare.
As the largest private sector employer in the United States, Walmart has enormous power to set the trends not just for the retail and service industries, but for the economy as a whole. Wages and working conditions set at Walmart have a ripple-effect throughout all jobs: low wages, limited access to health care and no retirement security [...]
This will be the first direct action many Walmart workers take, and they will need support in their communities and around the country to back them up. So let’s gear up and support Walmart workers across this country by joining with them in actions on Black Friday.
That recognition, that solidarity with Walmart workers matters for the greater economy, has a lot of resonance. The progressive policy think tank Demos released their study yesterday on how increases in retail wages would support the entire economy with tens of billions in new stimulus. Labor unions have a fractious past, but seeing them work together on a variety of fronts, including the unions that normally tend their own gardens, has been encouraging.
The Corporate Action Network has created a widget to help people find the protests at Walmart stores in their area on Black Friday (some of which will be held on Thursday, as Walmart decided to open their stores early this year). Meanwhile, the NLRB plans to expedite their ruling on Walmart’s complaint, to ensure clarity before the protests begin.
Photo by UFCW under Creative Commons license
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The search tool does not work on the widget, but the “marquee” events seem tight.
The OUR action in suburban DC is sponsored by UFCW!
The OUR action in suburban Cook County (Chicago) does not seem to have formal union backing, but it plans to deploy to several Walmarts simultaneously on pre-paid buses, so it’s obvious this has AFL-CIO backing.
The Milwaukee action is similarly well-organized with a specific meetup point and even a phone number.
With only three days to go, planning seems rudimentary for Los Angeles and San Francisco.
My mom worked for their sister company Sam’s for years. The pay was decent and she has benefits. Then a few years back they fired all the people in her department. Their duties were taken over by a “private” company. Basically its one of those companies that exists more or less soley to service Sam’s/walmart. They were given the choice of parting ways or being hired by the other company for 1/2 the pay and no real benefits.
I have also had them as clients. They are the cheapest company around. wont go into details here but will say they choose to use employees in their ads simply so they didnt have to pay models/actors as just one example of their cheap.
anyway. my question is really “who are all these black friday shoppers?”. I honestly dont know anyone in real life who bothers. In fact, the Black Friday actually motivates people to stay away from any thing related to retail. I mean we try and AVOID shopping.
The news showed people already camping out last nite. Something is seriously wrong with these people.
So my point is that anyone who really cares about Friday wont be swayed by any of this.
We have an action in ABQ, also sponsored by UFCW, and (un)Occupy is supporting it.
Walmart could nip this in the bud quickly by offering to pay living wages. It would have a negligible effect on their bottom line, and ingratiate themselves in the communities in which they operate. Or, do they think this is going to end on Saturday?
On the other hand, they do have the retail sector’s driving principle of low wages to think about.
Walmart is not a proactive company. They are a reactive one.
They spend a lot of time fighting things that would be actually good for them. It took them years to recognize that an increased minimum wage would mean that their shoppers would have more to spend in their stores. They spent more years fighting the idea that we needed to reform health care on the national level(before some genius at the top finally realized, hey if we got rid of this “issue” it’d be one less reason that the unions would have as an argument to unionize.)
I worked for Walmart for 3 years. First as a night cashier, and then as a CSM. They made the federal government bureaucracy I worked in before it for 12 years look well managed in comparison. I was unsurprised that they had wage discrimination lawsuits since there seemed little attempts to quantify why specific people got specific wages(they have since fixed this but then “capped” specific skill sets which means some of their most loyal associates felt under appreciated.) There is no rhyme or reason to training and little incentive to cross train since there was no wage increase unless you actually held the job on a permanent basis. The management team spent no time examining skill sets to figure out where people would be happiest and therefore most productive or even developing skill sets(why the heck would anyone want to learn the service desk if it means no financial incentive to them and just more responsibility and being heave hoed over somewhere if someone calls in sick?)
All in all my 3 years were very informative. What I learned most though is that Walmart’s philosophy is the opposite of mine. They focus on the bottom line first. My position is if you take care of your workers and your customers then a positive bottom line will follow. People aren’t numbers and if you continue to treat them as if they are eventually you are going to have a problem.
The true test of solidarity will come when union families refuse to shop there.
Hi, this is Audrey with Corporate Action Network. Thanks for the feedback. We hope you’ll participate in a Black Friday event near you or adopt a store to host an event yourself at bit.ly/walmartstrikers. If you have any other questions or comments on Corporate Action Network or the Black Friday events, we hope you’ll get in touch at help@corporateactionnetwork.org.